The former top aide to Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski testified that he helped rig a $3 million streetlight project in favor of a donor to the mayor’s campaigns because it was “critically important to his political future.”

The Efficiency Network in Pittsburgh was among a handful of companies qualified to carry out the work to convert the city’s streetlights to high efficiency LED fixtures, former Managing Director Francis Dougherty testified in the second day of Pawlowski’s pay-to-play trial. Patrick Regan, then vice president of TEN, was a member of a powerful politically connected Western Pennsylvania family, Dougherty told jurors.

Dougherty testified that he didn’t usually involve himself in the process of drafting the documents by which the city advertised jobs like the streetlight work, but when the mayor asked, he took steps to give TEN a competitive advantage.

“Was it a level playing field in the streetlights contract?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Wzorek asked.

“It wasn’t,” Dougherty replied.

“Who unbalanced it?” Wzorek asked.

“I did,” Dougherty said, elaborating that he did so at Pawlowski’s request.

“The expectation was that once Patrick Regan had gotten the contract, he would be a major fundraiser for him out in Pittsburgh,” Dougherty testified.

Later, Dougherty described a cyber security contract awarded to a company backed by an influential New York political fundraiser in similar terms. Jack Rosen was a wealthy real estate developer and a prodigious political fund raiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dougherty said.

“It was critically important to his political future to have a contract for Mr. Rosen so that he would have Mr. Rosen to raise money for him in the political circles of New York,” Dougherty said.We had to get Mr. Rosen a contract. That means we had to find something to give Mr. Rosen a contract for,” Dougherty said.

Dougherty said they explored the possibility of allowing Rosen to develop a piece of city property near Trexler Park but determined any such project would become mired in legal challenges. They then considered giving Rosen a contract to develop commercial space in a new parking structure being built by the Allentown Parking Authority. That didn’t pan out either, Dougherty said.

Soon, Pawlowski had identifed Rosen as the backer of a cyber security company called 5C, later known as Ciiber.

“My task for the mayor was to find them work,” Dougherty said.

Dougherty testified he worked with other city officials to identify work for the company and Ciiber was awarded a $35,000 contract. The contract was cancelled by the city solicitor’s office after the FBI raided City Hall in July 2015, Dougherty said.

Dougherty is the first member of Pawlowski’s senior staff to testify in the trial, where Pawlowski faces 54 counts including conspiracy, bribery, attempted extortion, fraud and making false statements to the FBI. Dougherty pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and is required to testify in the trial to get the benefit of his plea agreement with prosecutors, although he told jurors he has not been promised any specific sentence.

He recalled Tuesday morning that after Pawlowski announced his plans to run for U.S. Senate in 2015, his role as managing director in City Hall changed.

“I think, succinctly, I was hired to mind – m-i-n-d – the store when he was away,” Dougherty said. “When he began campaigning, the responsibilities of the position became to mine the store—m-i-n-e.”

He told jurors that Pawlowski convened a meeting of his staff in April 2015 to announce that after “much contemplation and consulting with his family,” he had decided to run for Senate. Pawlowski then told his staff he would need all of them to give him “globs of money” for the campaign.

“It was critical to show he was a serious player,” Dougherty said, adding that Pawlowski figured he needed $5 million to be taken seriously on the national political stage.

In the case of the streetlights contract, Dougherty said he was given a thumb drive by Jim Hickey, a business consultant who was assisting TEN in its effort to secure the job. The drive contained copies of requests for qualifications under which the company had successfully bid for similar projects in other cities, including Bethlehem and Reading.

Dougherty said he took the documents to Public Works Director Craig Messinger and told him to include the language in the Allentown’s request for qualifications. But when the city’s RFQ was released, it didn’t include some of the language. That prompted a series of phone calls from Hickey and Sam Ruchlewicz, one of the mayor’s campaign consultants. Dougherty also had a conversation with Pawlowski, who he said asked, “Who do I need to fire?”

Much of Dougherty’s testimony Tuesday morning involved prosecutors playing conversations secretly recorded on video by Ruchlewicz or on a wire tap of Ruchlewicz’s phone followed by Dougherty identifying the voices heard in the recordings. In one, Ruchlewicz is heard telling Regan that the RFQ is ready to be released and that the bidders will have two weeks to respond.

“It’s all teed up and ready to go for you,” Ruchlewicz tells Regan.

“Awesome,” Regan replies. “I know what to do and we are going to put our 100 percent best foot forward and thanks for the information.”

In another, campaign consultant Mike Fleck tells Regan that he cannot meet with Dougherty, but rather should pass the RFQ documents to Hickey to maintain a degree of separation. Fleck assures him that the documents will give TEN an advantage.

“We want the process to eliminate as much competition as possible, just not for you,” Fleck says.

PHOTO GALLERY: Scenes from Day 2 of the trial of Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski at the federal courthouse in Allentown on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018.

Earlier Tuesday, Pawlowski’s defense attorney, Jack McMahon, completed a cross-examination of former Philadelphia politician and law firm business developer Jonathan Saidel, who testified Monday about Pawlowski’s complaints that the law firm he represented had given him relatively little campaign money while receiving more than a million dollars worth of business from the city.

Pawlowski played a portion of a video recorded in Saidel’s office in March 2015. It shows Pawlowski, Saidel and campaign consultant Sam Ruchlewicz discussing Pennsylvania politics and Pawlowski’s chances as a Democrat running for Senate. McMahon highlighted Saidel’s statements of support for Pawlowski’s candidacy, and instances in which Saidel addressed Pawlowski as “Senator.”

“You said, ‘So I think you’ve got a good story to tell,” McMahon asked.

Saidel agreed he had said that.

A few moments later, McMahon confronted Saidel with his statement on direct examination Monday that he found the mayor’s complaints about the firm’s lack of support to be “blatant, amateurish and sad.”

“That’s the same guy you were going to throw him against the wall?” McMahon asked.

”I would have thrown him against the wall and reminded him what the responsibilities were of being a candidate,” Saidel testified.

Pawlowski, the city’s mayor since 2006, is being tried alongside co-defendant Scott Allinson, an attorney with the Allentown law firm Norris McLaughlin & Marcus. Both have pleaded not guilty.

The trial kicked off on its first day in Allentown on Monday with opening statements from prosecutor Anthony Wzorek and defense attorneys Jack McMahon and William Winning.

Wzorek spoke bluntly with the jury of seven men and five women, telling them that the case is about “bribery, about fraud and about lies.”

“It’s a case about a mayor, Ed Pawlowski, who sold his office by soliciting bribes from the highest bidder,” he said.

“If you wanted a contract with the city of Allentown under Mayor Ed Pawlowski, you needed to pay,” Wzorek added, before outlining the nine schemes in which Pawlowski allegedly pressured law firms, engineers, architects and others seeking business from the city for donations.

McMahon, Pawlowski’s defense attorney, told jurors during a more than hour-long opening statement that they would see Pawlowski as an ethical person who did things by the book.

The government’s case against Pawlowski was built on the cooperation of two of Pawlowski’s political consultants, Mike Fleck and Sam Ruchlewicz, who were themselves, McMahon told jurors, “conniving, self-absorbed, morally bankrupt, money grubbing, moral reprobates.”

“This case is real simple. It’s about Fleck and Ruchlewicz, two crooks, two peas in a pod. This case is the Mike and Sam show and we’re all just watching it, sucked in like Mayor Pawlowski,” McMahon said.

In a surprise move, McMahon said Pawlowski will take the witness stand and “bare his soul” to prove his innocence.

Winning, who is representing Allinson, told the jury during a brief opening statement that they would hear testimony of Allinson’s “spotless personal and professional record.”

Winning acknowledged that the jury will hear things on tape said by Allinson that are “inappropriate.” He characterized the recordings as bar room or locker room talk. But ultimately, nothing came of the bravado, Winning said.

Yes. On Monday, two witnesses took the stand: Allentown Attorney Donald Wieand and former Philadelphia politician Jonathan Saidel. Both testified about conversations they had with Pawlowski about trying to obtain legal work.

Wieand, who works with the law firm Stevens & Lee and defended the city in lawsuits against the police department for about 25 years, testified that he was taken aback when Pawlowski approached him at a political event and asked him directly for a $1,000 contribution from the firm. He called Pawlowski “the most aggressive fundraiser in the Lehigh Valley.”

“It was just a relentless fundraising machine he seemed to be trying to put together,” Wieand said.

Wieand testified that after the city took out a new insurance policy in 2008, his work from the city began to dry up, and he recalled unsuccessful efforts to drum up business through the solicitor’s office.

In 2015, Wieand testified, he received a call at his office from Pawlowski who said Wieand was going to get a call from then city solicitor Susan Wild.

“My first reaction was, well that’s good, I’m going to get some legal work from the city,” Wieand testified. “Then he launched into his pitch about running for Senate, and I realized there were strings attached.”

Pawlowski asked Wieand for a $1,000 contribution to his Senate campaign and Wieand, fearing that refusing would risk his chance for more city work, agreed, he testified.

“My initial reaction was I was angry. I was angry at him for putting me in that position. I was angry at myself for not dodging his question,” Wieand testified, later telling jurors that he never followed through on the donation.

“I thought to myself now I’m in the middle of a pay-for-play situation, and I don’t want any part of that,” Wieand testified.

Saidel, who served as Philadelphia controller for 16 years, testified he was asked to work with Stevens & Lee to help generate business for the firm. He met with Pawlowski in his Philadelphia office in March 2015 and the two discussed the firm’s availability to do work for the city.

Pawlowski’s response stunned and shocked Saidel, he testified. Pawlowski first raised a grievance with the firm over a matter in Reading, and then complained that despite the firm receiving more than a million dollars worth of work, its political donations had been too small.

“It was blatant, amateurish and sad all at the same time,” Saidel said.

The prosecution presented several videos secretly recorded of the mayor’s meeting with Saidel and of conversations between Ruchlewicz, Fleck and Pawlowski discussing their dealings with Saidel.

“OK well listen … I’ve given them millions of dollars of work in the past and, and then they’ve basically ran me over with a giant bus and rolled over me a couple times,” Pawlowski said to Saidel, of his beef with the law firm.

Later prosecutors played a recording of Ruchlewicz and Pawlowski in an elevator discussing the meeting.

“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have said anything about the donation back there. I just don’t know who is ever recording us or anything,” Pawlowski said in the recording.

McMahon began cross-examining Saidel Monday and was repeatedly warned by U.S. District Judge Juan R. Sanchez to keep his voice down. McMahon questioned Saidel’s recorded statements that he supported Pawlowski’s run for Senate, asking him why he would support a candidate he deemed amateurish and sad.

“Those are not people you want to be U.S. senator, are they sir?” McMahon asked.